


The Long Way Home

by Kunstpause



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Ambiguous Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Elidibus needs a hug but he won't take one if offered, Freeform, Multi, Other, Sad, all the pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:22:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24055885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kunstpause/pseuds/Kunstpause
Summary: No one can understand the pain he feels when all he can do is remember - while they on they other hand can not.
Relationships: Elidibus/Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 23





	The Long Way Home

Death.

He thinks about it constantly. There is little else, after all. Death, or rather the fear of it, was what had started it all. For him, for the star, for everyone.

But where it once was terrifying, it is now something else. It lost its bite, its horror.

Over time death became something of a mockery. Waving the promise of an end in front of his face. All those people simply dying, as if there wasn’t an eternity of anguish waiting.

Death, so overdone and excessive in its magnitude, that it lost its terror and turned into mocking defiance. A protest against those who were denied the same.

Elidibus doesn’t die. 

But the star around him does. 

The first time it is agonizing. Millions of souls disappearing in an instant. Yet their collective screams hollow through his head for a long time. Forever maybe. He doesn’t know, he had to stop listening after a while.

After that it becomes something worse.

When he finds them for the first time, after, they don’t recognize him. It takes him far too long to realize they can’t even see him. They lost so much. Are so terribly broken and Elidibus draws back into the darkest place he knows, hiding from the grief and the shame and the guilt.

In these moments he sits alone at the piano, the room darkened as he plays the familiar notes of a long forgotten melody. A desperate cry back to different times, when the world still sang along with him. Now, the only ones who even remember are his two companions. The three of them are all that is left of their entire world. And even if they would sing, he knows it would be hollow.

He tries again, after the second time. He finds them, calls out to them. But again they can neither hear nor see him. 

It shouldn’t hurt so much. Not after he has been through it before. 

It hurts worse somehow.

The third time is almost enough to bring him to despair. To question what it was all for. All he wanted was to bring them home, but nothing has changed and he feels like giving up.

He doesn’t. 

Instead he goes back to the piano, untouched by time and the fragility of life, and plays their melody until the hands of the frail form he took give out on him. The music still feels empty, all on its own, but it's better than the silence would be.

The fourth time he doesn’t try to talk to them. He just watches from a distance. They look different each time. Their form changes so much they are outwardly unrecognizable. Elidibus sees past all that. Their soul, or what's left of it, still outshining any confinement of the flesh. But he isn’t ready for another disappointment, and so he leaves, right back to his music and his solitude.

He is so very tired of it all. So much, that he draws back completely. 

Let Lahabrea and Emet-Selch handle the next time. Elidibus finds it hard to care. Instead he loses himself in the vast darkness of dreams. Dreams of better times, filled with shining souls and connection.

It’s what he misses most in those rare moments when he allows himself to miss anything at all. Connection. The time he had been part of something that vast, that all-encompassing. An entire world around him that made him belong.

Now? Now they were three. The world was empty and he held enough grief to fill it several times over.

The fifth time goes by and Elidibus doesn’t leave. He stays and plays the same melody. He listens to what Lahabrea tells him but he never stops playing. 

“I saw them,” Lahabrea says, waiting for a reaction. 

Elidibus doesn’t give him one. It was nothing new, after all.

“They saw me as well.”

That one gets Elidibus to look up. 

“They did?”

A simple nod from the other makes his chest swell with something he had forbidden himself to feel. A flicker of hope.

“They did,” Lahabrea confirms but then he shakes his head in sorrow. “But they didn’t know a thing.”

It almost surprises Elidibus how, after so many years, the feeling of losing hope still burns that hot. Still threatened to tear him apart.

He doesn’t speak again and Lahabrea knows better than trying to get him to.

The sixth time he closes the door. Puts all his powers behind it to send a clear message to the other two that he doesn’t want to know. 

If alone is how he is meant to be, he will embrace it. But he can’t bear to see the repeated, broken promise of ‘what if’.

The seventh time happens and he is prepared to do the same. But someone doesn’t let him. Lahabrea again, this time fighting through all his barriers, tearing a hole in his solitude.

“You found them again?” Elidibus askes resigned, not looking up from the black and white keys underneath his ever moving fingers. 

“I did.”

Lahabrea’s voice holds something Elidibus doesn’t want to hear. Not anymore. He tries to ignore it.

“Are they themselves?” he asks, his tone biting. 

“They are… something.” It’s a peculiar answer Lahabrea gives. When Elidibus just stares at him he elaborates. “Not quite them. Not yet. They still don’t remember but…”

“I wish you wouldn’t bother me with inconsequential things,” Elidibus interrupts him before starting over his piece once more. He doesn’t need the reminder of how broken the world is. Not anymore. Not when he can feel it with every fibre of his being.

“They remember this,” Lahabrea says all of a sudden and it takes a good moment of confusion until Elidibus sees his outstretched hand, pointing at the piano. “They remember the melody. I’ve heard them hum it under their breath. That is… something, isn’t it?”

Elidibus hands are frozen on the keys as he takes a deep breath. Lahabrea was right. It was something.

And so after eons he leaves his dark sanctuary. The first time he sets foot on the cursed and broken star again it feels unreal. Everything is vastly different then it was the last time he had checked on them. So different and yet painfully the same.

Empty shells floating through an echo of an existence. Unaware of their fragility. Their flaws. 

He finds them sitting in a corner of a tavern, eyes closed and humming under their breath. That tune, that melody that has become the capstone of his soul feels sweeter than ever before, coming from their lips.

The next day he makes them give chase. Tests them.

And finds them lacking in every regard. 

They are not who they are supposed to be. Not yet. But for the first time since he can remember there is something there that looks like a possibility. Seven times. They were halfway there.

He sees their soul, shining dimly. Nothing like it once was, but still so much more bright than everything around them. The torn, frayed edges glowing almost beautifully in their potential. A broken soul clinging to an even more broken shell of a form. And yet…

He tells them of balance and they listen. They don’t trust him, but they listen at least and Elidibus feels that it is time. Time to no longer hide away in the dark and pity the universe. 

They have potential and he challenges it. 

Lahabrea does as well and meets his end at it. 

Emet-Selch takes a turn, scoffing at Elidibus’ calls for caution.

“You forget you are not the only one who lost them sometimes, my dear Emissary,” he says with a mocking tone and a dismissive hand-wave.

And then he is no more and Elidibus is truly alone.

When he meets them again he is surprised for a moment. The eighth hasn’t happened and yet they are… more.

And he knows. Knows with more certainty than ever before that he needs to finish what he started. He is the last one. Their last chance of becoming whole again, even if they don’t see it.

And if he has to play a villain of magnificent proportions to make sure they will heal, he will do just so. He will not rest until they remember just where they knew that melody from. Until his name, his true name, falls from their lips and he sees the recognition in their eyes.

He has made a promise, after all, and he will keep it and stop at nothing to bring them home.


End file.
